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My parents (AND THOSE BEFORE THEM) lived in a time where things were still “mysterious.” By that, I mean they couldn’t GOOGLE the mysterious and exciting sounding Bedazzeler and become instantly downhearted like my generation can. Their information came from books, magazines, newspapers, and TV. If it wasn’t on TV, many current topics weren’t heard about until the newspaper came out or someone said something about it a few days after. HOW BORING!!!

However, they saw epic things on TV for the 1st time! The moon landing, JFK’s assination, Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey, the 1st color TV, Fred meeting Ether, the Vietnam war, and so on and so on…

My generation has seen some doozies as well! Here is a list of some of the most amazing things that I have seen on TV so far in this life! ( in no particular order)

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Oh my. Inés V. just let us know about a contest on WTVN, a conservative talk radio station in Ohio (reader Scapino clarifies that the conservative tone is mostly due to syndication of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, not really the local DJs). Just…see for yourself:

It’s an astounding example of dehumanizing undocumented immigrants — being a proud American is linked to “illegals” (a term that somehow seems more stigmatizing than terms like “illegal immigrants” or “illegal aliens,” even — a linguistic erasure of personhood altogether) being scared, presumably of all the proud Americans they encounter, and the lucky winner gets to go “spend a weekend chasing aliens”. It’s like you’re getting to go on a safari.

Groups in Columbus have organized a response and will be delivering letters to the station this afternoon, before the contest ends, in protest.

BP officials told the House on Wednesday that the Deepwater Horizon oil well failed a key test on the morning of the April 20 explosion. The test revealed that gas had built up unevenly in the pipe; it’s now believed that a surge of gas caused the explosion. Separately, Representative Bart Stupak is expected to announce that the House has discovered “four significant problems” with the blowout preventer, including “a significant leak in a key hydraulic system.”

Garbage, fire, nuclear bomb explosion—these are possible solutions to stop the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? The Daily Beast looks at 11 of the most out-there ideas proposed so far.

Peat Moss

Is the fact that it worked in Norway a good reason to give peat moss a try? The hyper-absorbent moss has been used to generate moisture, and the panhandle county of Escambia, Florida, has proposed dropping it into the Gulf. Kallak Torvstrøfabrikk, a Norwegian company, developed a series of products based on peat moss to be used in oil spills, after it was used to clean up a spill off the coast of Norway in 2009.

Oil Corral

BP’s engineers have suggested a giant underwater cone, but one amateur engineer has a different solution: to create a permeable cone placed over the leak. By creating the malleable cone, Rick Lewis hopes it reduces pressure in the deep sea environment. In this model, some of the oil will leak out from the structure.

Berms

State and local officials in Louisiana started dropping sand bags in the water, and U.S. National Guard teams in Alabama arrived on Dauphin Island, a tiny barrier island, to build a sand berm, intended to back the oil from moving any closer to the mainland.

Garbage

Don’t laugh: BP’s COO proposed creating a chamber over the leak and shooting garbage into the space to plug it. Plans to create a four-story dome to cap the leak fell apart after crystals formed when the gas combined with water, so officials hope the smaller chamber filled with garbage will be a stronger structure. Newsweek also has a post up highlighting some of BP’s crazier schemes.

Nuclear Bomb

Norway offered one solution; here’s another from Russia . Komsomolskaya Pravda, a major Russian daily, suggests an old Soviet trick: small nuclear blasts. According to the newspaper, it’s such a useful solution that it was used five times by one company in the Soviet Union.

Surfactants

A scientist from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis proposes spraying these soap-like substances, which would work like dishwashing liquid. Dr. Gabriel Filippelli said surfactants disperse the oil in the water and work as a nutrient for the bacteria.

Hair

The much-publicized hair solution has been proposed by a California-based ecological charity. Philippine officials initially came up with the idea in 2006 but backed out at the last minute. Instead, rice stalks were attached to bamboo poles and used as makeshift brooms.

Woodchips

Green Energy Recourses Inc. offered 100,000 tons of wood chips for containment. The company proposed placing woodchips inside a containment boom and through honeycomb structures to absorb the oil as well as collect it. One difference from peat moss: It won’t sink to the bottom; it would need to be collected from the surface. But the woodchips could help generate electricity at power stations.

The Florida panhandle town of Walton has already started spraying hay into the water if it arrives at the shoreline. A popular YouTube video has surfaced this week showing viewers how to use hay to disperse oil.

Hot Tap

Another solution from BP: Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) would be used to tap into the riser and pump oil out of it and onto the surface through a pipe. It’s admittedly more dangerous, as it drills another hole into the rig.

Correction: This story originally referred to surfactants as suracants.

As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance refers to a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was particularly current in aristocratic literature of Medieval and Early Modern Europe, that narrated fantastic stories about the marvelous adventures of a chivalrous, heroic knight, often of super-human ability, who goes on a quest. Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with ironic, satiric or burlesque intent. Romances often reworked legends and fairy tales and traditional tales about Charlemagne and Roland or King Arthur. A related tradition existed in Northern Europe, and comes down to us in the form of epics, such as Beowulf, which were deeply imbued with dreamlike and magical elements foreign to the classical epics. However, This is not that sort of tale:

Long ago “a crowned god of war” and “the little wise one” conceived a child. This child grew into a woman whose name , when translated into English, meant “the beloved, merciful legendary princess.” She was well educated and eloquent. She was looked on fondly by all those around her.

Far away, around the same time, “a crowned wagon driver” wooed “the unheeded prophetess” and convinced her to marry. Their union resulted in a man/child, whose name, when translated into the English tongue, meant “eminent, crowned, gift of God.” The boy’s mother thought this was accurate, but it was kind of a joke to those that knew him.

The man/child and the princess met one day years later in the area know as the “mouth of the river.” The man/child made the princess laugh, so she kept him around and eventually they fell in love. They eventually were married (after the man/child chased a demon into the land of “Ta-Has”). Not long after their marriage they produced a child named “Gift of an attentive bountiful God.” This child was lauded as the greatest arrival on the planet since the one they called “MC HAMMER.” Truly a great and fortuitous event!

Don’t know where I was really going with this but, I was thinking about what our kid’s name actually meant. So, I looked it up…then looked up the wife…then looked up the ME…then our parents.

Texas schoolchildren will be required to learn that the words “separation of church and state” aren’t in the Constitution and evaluate whether the United Nations undermines U.S. sovereignty under new social studies curriculum.

requirements on teaching the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation’s Founding Fathers and required that the U.S. government be referred to as a “constitutional republic” rather than “democratic.”

The board approved the new standards with two 9-5 votes along party lines after months of ideological haggling and debate that drew attention beyond Texas.

The guidelines will be used to teach some 4.8 million students for the next 10 years. They also will be used by textbook publishers who often develop materials for other states based on those approved in Texas, though Texas teachers have latitude in deciding how to teach the material.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said after the votes Friday that such decisions should be made at the local level and school officials “should keep politics out” of curriculum debates.

“Parents should be very wary of politicians designing curriculum,” Duncan said in a statement.

But Republican board member David Bradley said the curriculum revision process has always been political but the ruling faction had changed since the last time social studies standards were adopted.

“We took our licks, we got outvoted,” he said referring to the debate 10 years earlier. “Now it’s 10-5 in the other direction … we’re an elected body, this is a political process. Outside that, go find yourself a benevolent dictator.”

GOP board member Geraldine Miller was absent during the votes.

The board attempted to make more than 200 amendments this week, reshaping draft standards that had been prepared over the last year and a half by expert groups of teachers and professors.

As new amendments were being presented just moments before the vote, Democrats bristled that the changes had not been vetted.

“I will not be part of the vote that’s going to support this kind of history,” said Mary Helen Berlanga, a Democrat.

At least one state lawmaker vowed legislative action to “rein in” the board.

“I am disturbed that a majority of the board decided their own political agendas were more important than the education of Texas children,” said Rep. Mike Villarreal, a San Antonio Democrat.

In one of the most significant curriculum changes, the board diluted the rationale for the separation of church and state in a high school government class, noting that the words were not in the Constitution and requiring students to compare and contrast the judicial language with the First Amendment’s wording.

Students also will be required to study the decline in the U.S. dollar’s value, including the abandonment of the gold standard.

The board rejected language to modernize the classification of historic periods to B.C.E. and C.E. from the traditional B.C. and A.D., and agreed to replace Thomas Jefferson as an example of an influential political philosopher in a world history class. They also required students to evaluate efforts by global organizations such as the United Nations to undermine U.S. sovereignty.

Former board chairman Don McLeroy, one of the board’s most outspoken conservatives, said the Texas history curriculum has been unfairly skewed to the left after years of Democrats controlling the board and he just wants to bring it back into balance.

Educators have blasted the curriculum proposals for politicizing education. Teachers also have said the document is too long and will force students to memorize lists of names rather than learning to critically think.

Few things make me as upset as seeing someone who “deserves” to win lose through no fault or mistake of their own. I am speaking in general terms of the results of Survivor: Heroes vs. Villians, a reality show on CBS. Russell Hantz, an oil company owner from Dayton, TX is arguably the greatest manipulator the show has ever seen. Like him or not- he plays the game within the rules and does what he needs to to accomplish his goals. He is the most hated player the show has ever seen, BY THE OTHER PLAYERS, which has cost him winning either of the two seasons he as been on. However it is also worth noting that he as won the “FAN FAVORITE” $100,000 award, which is voted on by the viewers, both times he has competed and reached the finale. What this shows me is that the people Russell manipulated and used to his own ends-WITHIN THE BOUNDARIES OF THE RULES- can never win because the other contestants can not look past their own disdain and anger toward him to see that he truly deserves to win based the thousands

Russell’s play and 2 second place finishes have made me realize something that I really think is important. In my mind he deserved to win, when looked at from a “game” perspective…however, he made people upset and made their lives miserable on his way to reaching the finale. That part of the “game” is not accounted for by Russell and ends up what eventually costs him the million dollars, because the people he moves like pawns and manipulates are the very ones that decide to give him the million dollars or not and they can not and will not over look his brashness, rudeness, and hubris and acknowledge his superior game play and manipulation techniques.

THAT IS THE LESSON DEAR FRIENDS

The Tao of Russell states: No matter your level of accomplishment, no matter your level of success, no matter your level of pride – when looked at and judged by other people, they will remember how you treated them and those around them proving that emotion will always out weigh logic in personal decisions.

Well, I can’t just not say anything can I? You know me better than that.

Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a bill that Tom Horne (Az State School Head) has been pushing for for years. Horne has said, well… let me quote the AP article:

Horne, a Republican running for attorney general, said the program promotes “ethnic chauvinism” and racial resentment toward whites while segregating students by race.

Tom Horne is sacred that ethnic studies classes will educate minorities and make life harder for whites? Holy Shit! Where is his clan robe? Look, I live in Mississippi, I know a racist when I see or hear one. Tom Horne…you qualify! Can this man really advocate for the removal of the classes that teach the TRUE history of 56% of the Tuscon SD students’ ancestry? By the way, that’s 31,000 students in the Tuscon School Dist alone. Staggering.

Now I will give you something I found that will blow your mind:

Golden Rule Citizens Nomination Form

As a Golden Rule state, I am pleased to present a program that positively recognizes those who “treat others the way you would like to be treated” and who make a difference in Arizona. By using the form below, you can nominate an Arizona resident as an Arizona Golden Rule Citizen! Please nominate people who practice the Golden Rule and my office will mail you an Arizona Golden Rule Citizen Certificate that you can present to the person whom you nominated.

I found this hypocrisy on the Governor’s own website! I can safely assume ole Jan and Tom will not be getting a nomination anytime soon! If this theory of the golden rule is carried out they way it should be and she is treating people the way she wants to be treated then European History should be shut down. They both look vaguely European. Maybe they need to show some papers. WAIT WAIT WAIT…they are white. OBVIOUSLY AMERICAN!

That sounds ludicrous dosen’t it. Well, you gonna play hard ball…then play hard ball. I can’t believe I live in this country sometimes. I am ashamed of it on, what seems like, a growing number of fronts.

I never thought Mississippi would be more tolerant than another state esp. a western state. UNREAL!